As you may all have figured out by now, I love to rant about how anime swords seem to just keep getting bigger and bigger. And about how this constant increase in sword size seems to occur for no reason other than perhaps to compensate for other… shortcomings. *ahem*… Ok, so maybe that’s not fair. But it’s just kind of crazy the sizes these things seem to get to.

However, seeing as how the vast majority of these swords, apart from a few rare exceptions, are usually anime swords, I cannot fault the makers. But you can probably imagine my surprise to find that someone had actually made a real live humongosword, *without* the benefit of animated inspiration. Now the site I originally found it on no longer seems to carry it, but I thought I’d post it anyway for your humor/enjoyment:

Fantasy Chopper

Yep. Now this is a Completely Pointless Sword Of Unusual Size. (or CPSOUS… errr… OK, that didn’t work out the way I planned. Never mind.) I mean look at it. It’s HUGE!!! I’m sure you could chop down trees with this thing. Honestly. Basically what we have here is an seriously over sized, curved blade. With a spine that has the vestigial remains of what looks like tree cutting teeth on the back. (I’m telling you, this had to be one of those old fashioned, two man tree saws, in a past life. Seriously)

Fantasy Chopper - Hilt

And look at the hilt on this thing. Sure it looks nice with the leather wrap and all, but I don’t think it was intended for human use. More likely for giants. Nehphilim maybe. There are one handed swords, there are hand and a half swords, there are two handed swords and then there’s this. What’s this you ask? Well it’s a 4 handed sword of course. What does it look like? Pffft.

Fantasy Chopper - Pommel

Looking at the pommel, we can see it has what looks like a full tang construction, with the tang peened to keep the grip and pommel in place. But given the sheer size of this thing, anything less would be blasphemy.

The thing is, I cannot really think of anyone, outside of Hercules, The Hulk, Thor, or any similarly empowered fictional individual, who could wield something like this effectively. People seem to think bigger is better. But when it comes to swords, it’s not. As with everything, there is a point of diminishing returns, beyond which lies stupidity. And there lieth this chopper.

And then I keep seeing people writing comments saying things like “Oh yeah, I got this super duper humongosword, and I can wield it pretty easily.” Honestly people. Seriously. I’ve said it a gazillion times, and I’ll say it again. The ability to swing a sword around is NOT the same as wielding a sword. I read those comments and I get the impression that this is how some people think using a sword like this would be like:

Our hero rides slowly out from the sunrise, sitting tall atop a giant steed, massive sword slung across his back. Suddenly, he is beset by three bandits!! He stops for a second. “Your money or your life.” one of the rogues growl. Our hero eyes them silently for a few more seconds. Then, lightly tapping with his spurs, he urges his stallion forward as if they weren’t there. Enraged, the bandits set upon him, swords drawn, like a pack of wild boars. In a single swift motion, our hero reaches back, unsheathes his massive sword, and cleaves all three bandits in two with a single cut. Then, swinging it once again in the air to clean their filth from his noble blade, he re-sheaths his sword and rides on, as if nothing had happened…

LOL.. Yeah. right. In real life, this is what would have happened.

<REALISM ENGINE ACTIVATED>

Our hero rides slowly along, atop a giant steed, tired and aching from lugging his massive sword across his back all day long. Suddenly, he is beset by three bandits!! He stops for a second. “Your money or your life.” one of the rogues growl. Our hero eyes them silently for another second. Then, too tired to put up a fight, he attempts to reach for his money bag and give them all his cash. The bandits, mistaking his weary, spastic, uncoordinated action as a hostile act, converge upon him, short swords drawn, like a pack of wolves.

Realizing what was about to happen, our hero, now fully awake, reaches back to unsheathe his massive sword, but tumbles from his horse, as he tries to tug his massive weapon free of it’s sheath. But the saw teeth on the spine get caught on his cloak, and he spends a few precious seconds pirouetting wildly to get it free. Finally, ripping it loose, he swings it wildly at the nearest bandit… And misses. The bandit saw it coming a mile away and easily sidestepped the incoming blade. And before our hero can recover and attempt another swing, the other two are upon him, stabbing him repeatedly like a snitch being shanked for squealing on one of his own, in a prison yard…

<REALISM ENGINE DEACTIVATED>

Suddenly a chihuahua wearing a black cape and mask appears! Wielding a tiny rapier with almost impossible speed, the Little Masked Chihuahua routes the bandits, and rescues our hero from almost certain death. At the local hospital, Our hero proclaims: “I owe you my life little masked Chihuahua! How can I ever repay you?”. “First, get a smaller sword, my friend.” the masked Chihuahua responds, chuckling to himself. “Next, remember this day. For one day I may call upon you to provide me with chalupas. And you must not refuse me.” “Yes, little Masked Chihuahua… You are wise. I will do as you say, and I will never forget. Thank you!” With a nod, the Little Masked Chihuahua rides off into the sunset, leaving our hero to await his return…

Ok, ok, ok.. So I went a little overboard with it. But you get the picture. Big swords are slow swords. The difference is noticeable even between regularly sized, reasonably fast swords, like a Foil and a Katana. So you can just forget about moving monstrosities like these with any kind of expedience.

19 Responses to “A Ludicrous Chopper.”

Are they saw teeth or duel breakers?? Hell if they’re duel breakers how the hell would you use them on that beast? This sword made me laugh because of the fact that two handed swords were made really long so they could overcome pike walls, but the curve on this blade totally makes that point null.

@Phyreblade: I don’t see what makes this so ludicrous. There’s nothing in the pictures to provide a sense of scale. For all we can see, it could only be a meter long. How big is it? Even if it’s two meters long, the hilt seems long enough to provide plenty of leverage and the blade isn’t unusually broad and heavy looking like anime blades. It could easily be a Japanese nodachi given a plain westernized hilt and some spiky bits.

@Jak: Not all two-handed swords were made to be pike breakers. That was the case in Germany and Switzerland, but not worldwide.

@Binh
Yes, you are correct, there is nothing in the pics that indicate the scale of the weapon. Sadly, I don’t have the original exact specs of the weapon, only my notes about it, which indicated that this was a WOUS.

So to be honest I cannot argue any of your points except for two. The first being that a two meter sword is still ridiculously long, no matter which way you slice it.

Regardless of how much leverage you have on it, mass is mass, and it will still be a slow weapon. It is the difference between wielding a weapon and swinging a weapon.

Sure, anyone can swing a large sword around, however the point of the ludicrous story I made up was that it takes a whole lot more time to swing a large sword, and it us much less responsive to directional changes than a smaller sword. The laws of physics dictate it.

Even things like Scottish Claymores, which I consider to be at the the limits of common sense sword length, don’t get much longer than 1.5 meters, and they weren’t really battlefield swords, they were used more the extended reach for battling mounted opponents and spears.

The second point is that if you look at the proportion of the length of this choppers blade vs it’s width, It is unlikely that this is a Nodachi, nor anything even remotely similar to a Katana in design.

no prob. i do agree with the general rant. just a bad example. the reason i even bothered to check it out is because i actually really like this sword. i think it’s got a good evil/elegant/simple balance.

Yes, the design is actually very, very close to the reaver sword. The ricasso slots need to go, and the tip needs to be thicker, with a lot more upward sweep at the spine, but apart from that they are actually very similar.